Equality: In the Year 2000 jw-2

by Mack Reynolds

  He shook his head this time. “No. It’s not that. I just wanted to look at you, and perhaps… tell you I love you.”

  Her eyes had narrowed very slightly and there was something possibly sad behind them. But her words came out in a laugh. “You are—what was your old term?— corny,” she told him.

  He protested, “I’m not that old. Between that word and the time I went into hibernation there was ‘square,’ ‘not with it,’ ‘not hep,’ and various others I can’t think of right now. But, okay, breakfast it is.”

  They took turns in the bath and when he returned to the bedroom she had already garbed herself in the dungarees she almost always affected, and had dialed a complete new outfit for him except for shoes. He found it difficult to get used to the modern custom of wearing clothes a single time and then disposing of them to be recycled. He had been told that less labor was involved in such a system than washing, drying, ironing, replacing buttons, mending tears and holes. The textile industry was one of the most highly automated in the nation.

  They headed for the kitchen. On the way, Edith said, “Jule, tell me about prostitutes.”

  “What?”

  “About prostitutes. Whores.”

  As they sat down at the kitchenette table, he asked, “What’s this fascination you women have with the subject? Your mother asked me about it just the other day.”

  “A double order of ham and eggs, lots of toast, butter, marmalade? A liter of coffee?”

  “I could use it,” he agreed emphatically.

  After she dialed, she said, “From this perspective in time, it’s almost impossible to understand it, though, of course, as a student of anthropology I realize that since history began, prostitution existed in most parts of the world. But why did they do it?”

  “For money,” he said, his voice laconical.

  “How much money did they get?”

  He rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “I suppose it depended on the country, how attractive they were, how young. I’ve heard of prices ranging from twenty-five cents to five hundred dollars.”

  “Twenty-five cents!”

  “Women in India, aged, half-starved, undoubtedly diseased.”

  “And five hundred dollars?”

  The food had arrived. After she served it, he said, “In places such as New York, Hollywood, Paris, and London, they had ultra-swank call girls. Very high-class office, usually under the guise of a model agency or some such. You had to be properly introduced, properly identified, and all the rest of it. For anywhere from two hundred dollars up you could have a girl for the evening who was very presentable, well educated, a good conversationalist, and supremely attractive. The five-hundred-dollar ones were usually recognizable TV or movie starlets, who even gave you a bit of prestige when seen with them in the top nightspots or restaurants. Few people knew, of course, that they augmented their incomes by putting out for their arranged dates at an agreed-upon price.”

  “They must have hated it.”

  “To the contrary, some of them loved it. I recall once being invited on a yachting cruise with five other upper-class chaps in roughly my own age group. There were eight girls aboard, all of them available at any time. The party lasted a week. The best of food, the best of booze, and, frankly, the best of girls. They were all college students, by the way, making a bit of extra cash during the summer. Believe me, if there were any of them that didn’t love the job, they didn’t show it. As I recall, the yacht owner gave them a thousand dollars apiece at the end of the cruise. On top of that, some of the rest of us tipped their favorites.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, even as she ate.

  “But basically, how degrading.”

  He shrugged. “There were male prostitutes too. Handsome young physical specimens whom older women, usually, would go for—either for one-night stands, indefinite arrangements, or sometimes marriage.”

  She shook her head again. “I can’t imagine such a code of sexual morality.”

  He had to laugh at that. “Well, it’s a little difficult for me to comprehend some aspects of yours.”

  “I read that a good many of these women were lesbians; that they came to hate men so much that they turned to women for their real sexual release.”

  “Evidently some were. I think more were bisexual. There was quite a book on it just before I went under. The Happy Hooker. The author was a top-paid prostitute and madam who liked both men and women. Are there more lesbians now, since you’ve let down the legal barriers against homosexuals so far as consenting adults are concerned?”

  “Oh, no. I would think considerably less. It turned out that in many cases it was largely psychological—not completely, of course—and most of it disappeared among both men and women when legal restraints were removed and sex education improved. I tried it once.”

  He eyed her in surprise. “You did?”

  “Uh huh,” she said around a mouthful of ham. “Just to see what it was like. With a girl friend at school. I didn’t like it, though. I like men.”

  “So I noticed,” he said.

  “What was swinging all about?” she asked.

  “Swingers? Oh, well, toward the end of the sixties or so, a lot of sexual restraints were lifting. Quite a few people, especially the younger ones, were experimenting. Sometimes whole groups would get together and with complete abandon have any type of sex they could think of.”

  “Single people or married couples?”

  “Both. Sometimes they’d have little clubs, sort of, that would consist of two, three or four, or even more married couples who would meet weekly and have a sexual binge. Everyone who participated was expected to, uh, put out for anyone who wanted him or her. The others could stand around and watch or, if aroused, join in.”

  “Were you ever at one of these parties?”

  “To tell the truth, no. It never appealed to me.”

  “It doesn’t appeal to me, either. I think sex is a very personal thing between two people. Speaking as an anthropologist, offhand I can’t think of any society where group sex seemed to develop.” She considered it for a moment, before adding, “Unless you count some of the orgiastic religious mysteries of, say, the early Greeks. And they were invariably performed while under some hallucinogen such as the amanita muscaria sacred mushrooms. How do you account for it in your time?”

  He cocked his head slightly. “I suppose it was just one more aspect of the revolt that was going on, especially among the young. One group or another was protesting just about every aspect of our society. I suppose the swingers were protesting the restraints that had been put on sex for so long. Then, of course, there was wife-swapping.”

  She looked at him.

  He cleared his throat. “Two or more couples would get together periodically and exchange wives for the night, or for a weekend, or whatever.”

  “Then why bother to get married at all?”

  “Darned if I know. There were a lot of books and magazine articles by sociologists and others digging into the phenomenon. Some were pro and some were con. But I didn’t read anything that made sense to me particularly. At the time, as you know, I was preparing to be married myself, and would have been horrified by the idea of swapping my wife with someone else.” He grinned ruefully. “However, you know, in spite of the fact that I was the son of the Wild Wests—or possibly because of it—1 was slightly on the prudish side when it came to such things.”

  They had finished their breakfast.

  She asked nonchalantly, “Would you like to go back to bed for just a little, before we return to the university?”

  They didn’t get back to the Julian West University City until past lunch. They had stopped on the way at a motel which boasted an automated restaurant. Julian hadn’t noted any lessening in the food quality, which is something he could hardly have said about the food in roadside restaurants of his own era.

  He kept thinking of these days as other than his own time, which, in a way, was ridiculous. But a third of a
century had passed, of which he had no memories whatsoever.

  As they rode up in the elevator Edith murmured, “Father will be furious with me.”

  Then it hit him. A guest of the Leetes, so greatly in the debt of the doctor and his wife, he had taken the first opportunity to bed their daughter. He closed his eyes in pain. What kind of a bastard was he?

  “I… I suppose there’s no excuse,” he said. “I hate to deliberately lie to the Academician and your mother. After all, we were gone all night, and they aren’t stupid.”

  She frowned at him. “What is there to lie about?”

  He stared back at her. “You said he would be furious at our sleeping together.”

  “That’s not what I said at all. I said he would be furious.”

  He was even more confused. “What will he be furious about?”

  “That I took so long to see that you—”

  “You mean your parents won’t care?”

  “Why in the world should they? You’re in your mid-thirties, I’m in my mid-twenties, and we like each other. Isn’t it expected that we have sexual appetites? At present, I have no man I’ve been seeing regularly—or irregularly, for that matter. And, of course, you have met so few outside our family that you haven’t had much opportunity. In fact, have you met any young women at all?”

  “One or two, on my way in or out of the building.”

  “Well, were any of them attractive?”

  He thought about the girl of whom he had asked directions to the Cub Bar. “I suppose so.”

  “You could have asked one of them,” she said. “They would have undoubtedly been fascinated to sleep with Julian West. Why didn’t you?”

  He said sourly, “Because I didn’t want a bust on the nose.”

  “Why in the world would she want to put her breasts on your nose?”

  “Never mind,” he told her. “You’re not completely up on the idiom of my day.”

  They had reached their floor. Julian left Edith at the door to the Leete apartment.

  He said, “I think I’ll go on back to my own place and pick up a few notes I made before you told me about using the data banks. Unless you have something on, I’ll be over shortly.”

  “Fine, darling.” She offered her lips for a quick kiss, and he took immediate advantage of the opportunity before taking off.

  He hadn’t the vaguest idea of where he stood with her. Had they just had a one-night stand, or was she willing to go into what she called a semi-permanent relationship? He hoped it was the latter. She had mentioned that at present she had no young man. Her parting kiss and the casual endearment might be a good sign.

  He entered and headed directly to his study. At the threshold, he stopped dead. Even at a distance, it was obvious to him that the room had been searched. He was immaculate so far as keeping his things in order. Even before he crossed to the desk, he knew very well that his notes had been gone through; they simply were not in the order in which he had left them.

  He stared down at the desk for long moments.

  Possibly the doctor, or even his wife, had found some reason to come over and, in curiosity, had looked through the notes he had made while studying. It didn’t seem very likely but, on the other hand, he knew practically no one else. In the past month, the doctor had introduced him to a few cut-and-dried types connected with the “Julian West Project,” other doctors or academicians of one sort or another, but he could not imagine that any one of them would have entered his apartment and gone through his things.

  He went into the other rooms. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. For that matter, the few things he had brought with him from the past were those that he carried in his pockets. He hadn’t even gotten around, as yet, to securing a few items in the way of art objects and handicrafts to personalize his quarters, although both Edith and Martha had promised to help him to that end.

  It was simply a mystery.

  He shrugged it off, found the notes he had wanted to ask the Leetes about, and left for their apartment.

  In spite of the fact Edie had assured him that the doctor would in no way object to Julian sleeping with his daughter, he was still embarrassed about facing him. He knew he was probably being foolish. If the girl had received instruction from a sex tutor at the age of fourteen and on, and had had a whole series of affairs since then… But still…

  He stood before the identity screen of the Leete apartment and the door swung open. He entered the living room, stepping into what seemed an intense conversation between the academician and his daughter.

  They looked up at his approach.

  “I’m not intruding, am I?” he said hurriedly, already turning to leave.

  “No, no, of course not,” Leete told him. “It’s just that I had another strange experience this morning.”

  Julian stopped in his tracks.

  The doctor said slowly, “I went out for a drive through the countryside, just to gather my thoughts about a project I’ve been involved in for some time. I was on manual control, of course, most of the surface roads not being automated as yet. When a car pulled up behind me, I edged over to the side of the road to let it pass. However, it didn’t pass. I slowed. It slowed. There were four men in it. I couldn’t make them out very well, but they all seemed to be somewhat young. Still not thinking it overly strange, I sped up. They sped up and deliberately hit my rear bumper, an action that wasn’t particularly safe at that speed.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Julian.

  The other went on, “Somewhat shocked now, I sped up still more, and they continued to pursue. In my rear view mirror I could see that the two in the front seat were laughing. I tried everything I could think of; I turned down smaller side roads, thinking that they would continue on the highway, but they didn’t. They kept following, bumping my rear bumper at every opportunity. I was terrified that I might turn over. My car was an open one; theirs wasn’t.”

  “Good heavens, Father,” Edith exclaimed. “Why didn’t you summon Highway Security?”

  He looked at her strangely. “I couldn’t. My car phone wouldn’t work. They pursued me a good many kilometers before finally dropping away and abandoning the chase. I returned immediately and confronted one of the mechanics at the car pool. He examined the vehicle that I had taken over and, his face’s ace set in amazement, said that the car phone had been tampered with. I simply can’t understand it. And one other thing that would seem impossible…”

  He reached into a side pocket and brought forth a piece of paper, handing it first to Julian. “I found this in my pocket, after I got back here to the apartment.”

  Julian scowled down at it. “…one must either anticipate change or be its victim.—John K. Gal-braith.”

  Julian handed the paper to Edith. As she read it, he asked, “Could someone have slipped it into your pocket down in the lobby, or coming up in the elevator?”

  “Why… I suppose so,” the older man said, scowling. “I probably nudged against people all the way up from the car pool.”

  Julian slumped into a chair. He suspected that he was more at home in this atmosphere than were these other two, who had lived in a sheltered society for the past thirty years.

  He took a deep breath and said, “Look, in this Republic of the Golden Rule society of yours, are there many malcontents?”

  They didn’t quite understand him at first.

  He said impatiently, “I know this is Utopia, but there must be some who are dragging their heels. Even in Heaven there was a revolt of the angels and they had to kick Lucifer and some of the boys out.”

  Leete scowled. “We keep telling you, Julian: this is not Utopia. There is no such thing as Utopia. Society is in a continual condition of flux. Of course there are malcontents in United America today.”

  “Who are they?”

  He thought about that. “There are various individuals and groups. For instance, some of those who were at the very top under the former socioeconomic system; some of the ultra-wealth
y; some of the former politicians who wielded great power and loved it.”

  Edith said, “Some of the military, especially the top brass. But also lower echelons of the military who liked it for its own sake—its discipline, its traditions of glory.”

  “I see what you mean,” Julian muttered. “If George Armstrong Custer or old Blood-and-Guts George Patton were alive today, they’d hate a world in which there was no longer the need for war.”

  Leete added, “Quite a few of the religious, too. They rebel against the fact that religion is so rapidly disappearing under this socioeconomic system.”

  That surprised Julian. “You mean that you can’t study religion any more?”

  “No, no. 1 don’t mean that at all. A student can study religion, any religion. But we no longer teach religion as though it were true. If you decide that anything from the Amish to Zoroastrianism is the true faith, then you’re certainly free to embrace its teachings. But we don’t teach religion as religion. As the old expression goes, we let everyone go to hell in his own way. Some of the more orthodox—the Fundamentalists, the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox Jews—object. Younger people in our society don’t pay much attention to religion, which infuriates the generations which were raised in it.”

  “Who else?” Julian asked grimly.

  Both Edith and the doctor thought for awhile.

  Edith said, “There are some who strongly object to the fact that two percent of the population is all that is needed to produce what we need. Many of these, too, are members of the old religions, such as the Seventh Day Adventists. The Bible says that man was meant to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; today, nobody need sweat any more. Surprisingly enough, a good many of these objectors are among the ninety-eight percent who don’t work and subsist on their Guaranteed Annual Income. I suppose they are the ones who can find no manner in which to fill their leisure time profitably.”

  Julian grunted.

  Leete said slowly, “In actuality, there are quite a few of the older people, those in their sixties and beyond, who are taken aback by the many changes and long for the old ways. They haven’t kept up with the changes, and the so-called generation gap hits them the hardest. They rebel against everything from the new way of schooling to the new sexual permissiveness. They object to the fact that drugs are no longer controlled, or to pornography being freely available to anyone silly enough to want to read it. Some even protest that there is no longer news censorship on any level.”